Table Read

THE G.Y.M. — PILOT, ACT ONE By Dani Hanks
Welcome to the run-down fitness shithole at the end of the strip mall. Two buildings left standing, a tech repair shop and The G.Y.M., and across the street a brand new chrome-and-barbell luxury chain called Solstice is having its grand opening on the same day Valerie is trying to film her grand re-opening commercial.
Valerie inherited her childhood sanctuary the hard way. The previous owner got hauled off in handcuffs as "The Flamingo King," the FBI took the penguins, and she sank her life savings into keeping the bulldozers off the lot. Now the bike handlebars are snapping mid-shoot, the wifi is down, the POS is down, the smoothie blender is wifi-controlled (a mistake), and a real estate vulture in pinstripes will not stop circling the parking lot. Her ragtag crew, an Insta-thirsty trainer, a Finnish golden retriever on a visa, a chaos-gremlin receptionist who cannot swim, a buttoned-up IT guy from next door, a smoothie-bar veteran who misses the cocaine era, and a crystal-worshipping yogi with prison connections, is the only thing standing between Valerie and the wrecking ball.
It's a found-family workplace comedy in the bloodline of Cheers, Superstore, and The Bear, but make it the gym. HBO sitcom material with prime-network legs. Dani Hanks' pilot won the 2024 Austin Film Festival Josephson Entertainment Fellowship, the year-long development deal AFF hands to the one teleplay it bets the most on, and ISA named Dani one of the Top 25 Screenwriters to Watch in 2025.
We recorded this live at Podcast Movement at SXSW in front of a packed house of our peers, and you can hear it in the room. The energy, the laughs landing in real time, the cast riding the wave together. Video version available on YouTube and across our channels. Lean in with that, then let Act One take you the rest of the way.
CAST
Heather Foster - Narrator Allison Dunbar - Valerie Yasmine Al-Bustami - Kayla and Spin Client Kensington Tallman - Alexa and White Trash Spin Diva Shaan Sharma - Wade, Bored EMT, and Johnny Joe Nemmers - Gary Hughes, Cocky Newscaster, Television, and Gruff Driver Jacob A. Ware - Bryan and Sam Brian Villalobos - Chris, Weak-Armed Client, and Handyman Amy Bailey - Mary, Gem, Peppy Newscaster, First AC, and Phone Scott Hervey - Client Carlin (special guest appearance, our attorney from Weintraub Tobin)
Produced by Manifest Media. Created by Jack Levy, Mark Knell, and Shaan Sharma.

This live read benefits Best Friends Animal Society, selected by Allison Dunbar, dedicated to bringing no-kill to every shelter in the country. Save Them All. bestfriends.org/donate
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

PV & FRANNY
A girl with a glockenspiel. A boy with a guitar. A high school full of weirdos, mascots who may or may not be unhinged, and a mystery that isn’t what anyone thinks it is.
A dead-serious love story… that refuses to behave like one.
One flier turns into a band. One band turns into obsession. And before they ever play a real set, everything is already ridiculous.
ACT TWO
If Act One is about starting a band, Act Two is about what happens when everything immediately gets in the way.
Franny does what any rational person would do.
He writes a love song.
Which would be fine… except for the rule.
No romance. Ever.
And PV means it.
What follows is a series of perfectly logical decisions that somehow make everything worse.
A love song that says too much.
A date that shouldn’t exist.
A plan to fix things that only complicates them further.
Because if PV won’t date a bandmate, there’s only one solution:
Make the competition part of the band.
Which works.
Until it doesn’t.
As alliances shift, rules get enforced, and Franny finds himself deeper in a situation he cannot control, the band becomes something else entirely.
Not just music.
Not just friendship.
Something closer to a test.
Of loyalty. Of identity. Of whether you can separate what you create from how you feel.
And in the middle of it all, the stakes quietly expand.
A school competition that suddenly matters.
A partnership that feels more intense than anything either of them expected.
And a realization that success might not look the way they imagined it.
Act Two is where the band takes shape, the lines get blurred, and the consequences of those rules start to land.
Because sometimes the only thing more complicated than love…
…is trying to avoid it.
🎭 CAST
NARRATOR – Ty Burrell
AJAY – Rahm Braslaw
JUDY – Samantha Morelos
MARIAN – Eileen Fogarty
PV – Kensington Tallman
RYUZO – O’Neill Monahan
FRANNY – Liam Richardson
GROUNDSKEEPER – Fred Armisen
DALE – Ruben Ray
TAP WATER BOTTLED WATER JINGLE – Chris Mann
🎬 PRODUCTION
Written by Tommy Wallach
Directed by Mark Knell & Jack Levy
Executive Produced by Shaan Sharma, Jack Levy, and Mark Knell
Table Read is a Manifest Media production.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

PV & FRANNY
A girl with a glockenspiel. A boy with a guitar. A high school full of weirdos, mascots who may or may not be unhinged, and a mystery that isn’t what anyone thinks it is.
A dead-serious love story… that refuses to behave like one.
One flier turns into a band. One band turns into obsession. And before they ever play a real set, everything is already ridiculous.

ACT ONE
Overton High is chaos in a controlled environment.
The mascot smokes. The journalist thinks she’s breaking Watergate. The nicest bully in school politely refuses lunch money.
And then there’s PV.
Brilliant. Intense. Completely uncompromising.
She doesn’t want to start a band. She wants to build something real.
Franny Blevins just wants to be part of it.
What begins as an awkward coffee shop encounter quickly turns into a partnership built on music, rules, and one very firm boundary:
No romance. Ever.
Which becomes a problem almost immediately.
As Franny gets pulled deeper into PV’s world, her music, her logic, her investigations, and her completely upside-down way of seeing everything, the stakes escalate in the most unexpected ways.
A hate note that isn’t hate.
An audition that turns into an interrogation.
A band that starts to feel like something much bigger… and much messier.
Act One is the beginning of the band, the beginning of the obsession, and the moment everything starts to spiral just slightly out of control.

🎭 CAST
NARRATOR – Ty Burrell
AJAY – Rahm Braslaw
JUDY – Samantha Morelos
MARIAN – Eileen Fogarty
PV – Kensington Tallman
RYUZO – O’Neill Monahan
FRANNY – Liam Richardson
GROUNDSKEEPER – Fred Armisen
DALE – Ruben Ray
TAP WATER BOTTLED WATER JINGLE – Chris Mann
🎬 PRODUCTION
Written by Tommy Wallach
Directed by Mark Knell & Jack Levy
Executive Produced by Shaan Sharma, Jack Levy, and Mark Knell
Table Read is a Manifest Media production.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A mother is murdered. A tape destroys everything. And a driver who kept his mouth shut for twelve years finally decides to speak — with blood.

ACT THREE

The blackmail worked.
That’s the problem.
Because once the truth is out, there’s nothing left to negotiate.
Only what it costs.
Sal is done driving.
He’s done surviving.
And for the first time since he walked out of prison, he’s not trying to stay clean... he’s trying to settle accounts.

Hara finally reveals what Lotta really built, not a hustle, not a side game, but a system designed to take down men who thought they were untouchable. Vincent moves to contain it. Charlie gets caught in the fallout. And Carmela... the only innocent in a guilty world, pays for all of it.
That’s the moment the story breaks.
Not when the tape surfaces.
When the family does.
Act Three is not about power.
It’s about what power does when it slips.
Doors close. Phones stop ringing. Old friends don’t answer.
And the men who used to run everything start hiding from one man who has nothing left to lose.
Sal isn’t looking for a way out.
He’s looking for the last word.

And it’s waiting in a garage... one hostage, one voice over the intercom, and one decision that decides who walks and who gets carried out.
My Lady’s Song was never about blackmail.
It was about what happens after.
This is the part nobody survives.

🎭 CAST
SAL – Ronnie Marmo
CHARLIE – Sam McMurray
SENATOR BAXTER / THE JOHN – Joe Mantegna
VINCENT – Dan Lauria
HARA – Gia Mantegna
LOTTA – Ally Dunbar
DONNA – Janelle Marmo
CARMELA – Patty McCormack
PORN DIRECTOR – Robert Wuhl
LEO – Zeke Alton
ANTHONY – Alec Leonard
NARRATOR – Vanessa Richardson

With additional performances from:
Janelle Marmo, Ally Dunbar, Gia Mantegna, Zeke Alton, Alec Leonard

🎬 PRODUCTION
Directed by Jack Levy & Mark Knell
Executive Produced by Shaan Sharma, Mark Knell, and Jack Levy
Table Read is a Manifest Media production.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A limo driver. A blackmail tape in motion. A senator with everything to protect.
What started as leverage is about to turn into control, betrayal, and survival.

ACT TWO

The ride is over. The damage is not.

What was leverage becomes exposure.
And everyone wants a piece of it.

Sal thought he could drive away from it.
He was wrong.

The tape moves.

Hands change. Intentions shift.
And the people behind it start stepping into the light.

Vincent steps in. Old world. Old rules.
A man who understands that power isn’t what you have… it’s what you can take back.

Charlie circles.
Smiling just enough to make you wonder how far this goes.

And Baxter?

He doesn’t panic. He recalculates.
Because men like him don’t lose… they rewrite the outcome.

Hara sees it too.

The angles. The leverage. The opening.
And she’s not asking permission.

The city fades in the rearview. The road stretches out.
What’s left is distance… and decisions.

Who controls the tape?
Who controls the story?
And who walks away from it?

Because now it’s not about the job.

It’s about ownership.

Act Two is where alliances fracture, truth gets negotiated, and silence becomes the most dangerous move in the room.

And by the time it’s over…

no one is clean.

🎭 CAST

SAL – Ronnie Marmo
CHARLIE – Sam McMurray
SENATOR BAXTER / THE JOHN – Joe Mantegna
VINCENT – Dan Lauria
HARA – Gia Mantegna
LOTTA – Ally Dunbar
NARRATOR – Vanessa Richardson
DONNA – Janelle Marmo
CARMELA – Patty McCormack
PORN DIRECTOR – Robert Wuhl
LEO – Zeke Alton
ANTHONY – Alec Leonard

With additional performances from:
Janelle Marmo, Ally Dunbar, Gia Mantegna, Zeke Alton, Alec Leonard

🎬 PRODUCTION

Directed by Jack Levy & Mark Knell
Executive Produced by Shaan Sharma, Jack Levy, and Mark Knell

Table Read is a Manifest Media production.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.